Emanuel wants digital billboards in neighborhoods

Plan would allow 100-foot signs on city property

Digital billboards up to 100 feet tall could sprout on city-owned property in neighborhoods all over Chicago as part of a proposal Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced to the City Council on Wednesday.

The mayor's plan would allow outdoor advertising companies to build digital billboards on city land if they agreed to tear down at least five of their conventional billboards, which Emanuel says clutter the landscape and bring in too little revenue.

City Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott said there's no limit to how many of the signs the city would allow to be built as part of the trade-off program, and no estimate of how much revenue the city could bring in through agreements with the billboard companies. "It would be handled on a case-by-case basis," she said.

But Emanuel said there are now about 1,300 static billboards in Chicago. And the city owns or controls about 12,000 parcels of land, according to Emanuel administration estimates.

The revenue from the deals would be used to balance the city's books, Scott said. Digital billboards in neighborhoods would be subject to aldermanic approval as part of the regular City Council zoning process, she said.

The mayor's office did not mention the neighborhood billboard proposal several days ago when it unveiled a related part of its municipal advertising plan — a tentative 20-year deal to put 34 digital ad screens on city-owned property alongside expressways in return for at least $154 million.

Those expressway sites were already selected by a partnership created by East Coast billboard giant Interstate Outdoor Advertising and French firm JCDecaux, and Scott said that unlike the neighborhood sites, aldermen would need to show a compelling reason why a screen shouldn't go in those locations. Still, council approval is needed for the overall plan.

On Wednesday the administration released the list of the sites where Interstate-JCDecaux LLC hopes to build its signs. At least six locations are within half a mile of the downtown circle interchange. The rest are scattered along expressways throughout Chicago.

Emanuel's proposal would let the company install screens of up to 1,200 square feet near expressways or toll roads. Digital billboards in other parts of the city could have advertising screens up to 700 square feet.

The mayor's plan allows billboards to be built as close as 125 feet from property zoned for residences, closer than that if the sign is turned off between midnight and 5 a.m. and is either not visible from the front yard of the residence or is turned to face an expressway.